BY JOETTE KUNSE
Special to the Clarkston News
What a delight to drive down Main Street and see Clarkston’s holiday decorations. The planters in front of the stores are filled with red twig dogwood, evergreens and shiny Christmas ornaments to catch your eye while the Main Street light posts are decked with lighted snowflakes and garland and bows to honor the season.
The decorations are a gift to the community from the Clarkston Farm and Garden Club and the Clarkston Rotary Club. The Garden Club decorates the planters three or four times during a year to add beauty to Clarkston’s Main Street.
The Rotary Club has been decorating Main Street in one form or another since the 1940s, according to Joel DeLong, Rotary president. Over three years, the club has donated over $16,000 for the snowflake motif on Main.
Both clubs fundraise during the year to support projects for the benefit of the community. Clarkston Farm and Garden Club organizes a Garden Walk with the help of local gardeners in the summer and creates a Greens Market with handmade fresh green arrangements and wreaths and roping for sale the first weekend in December.
The Rotary Club is known for their wine tastings at Bordines and the Taste of Clarkston as well as the Old Newsboy sale in late November.
As the holiday season approaches, the Clarkston Garden Club is gearing up for the Greens Market to be held on Saturday, Dec. 7 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Church of the Resurrection, 6490 Clarkston Road, across from the library.
The club will sell fresh green arrangements, boxwood wreaths in a variety of sizes, and two foot mini trees all decorated for favorite sports, decorated in pink for breast cancer survivors, princess decorated trees, Jingle Bell trees and many other motifs are available.
‘Shop early as they fly off the shelf,? said Chairperson Anita Andes.
Mail box huggers are new this year and a mixed green table runner kit is available for purchase. Merry Bunches are back according to Andes, and the bag of mixed green stems gives each home the aroma of winter greens in a vase or on a windowsill.
Andes said the holiday arrangements for 2013 range from purely elegant to woodsy. She says there will be yule logs and arrangements with birch at the sale as well as all the traditional items.
Funds from the sale allow the Clarkston Farm and Garden Club to donate back to the community. The club gave $6,000 in scholarships to Clarkston’s graduating seniors in 2013, $3,500 in mini grants to teachers in the school system for environmental projects in the classroom, provided a speaker on mammals for all fourth grade classrooms in the district, and funds for planting the gardens at the district library and the Main Street planters.
Besides their Christmas decoration project, the Rotary sponsors the Labor Day parade, a SCAMP picnic and has their Shoes for Kids project coming up on Dec. 14. Over 400 pairs of shoes, socks, hats, gloves are given to students in the Clarkston Schools. The Rotary Old Newsboys will sell Goodfellows newspaper, published by the Clarkston News, this weekends to help fund the project.